Researchers from the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences (UT GSALS), UPLB College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM) and the UPLB Museum of Natural History (MNH) collaborated once again to document the presence of zoonotic viruses in Philippine bats by conducting a fieldwork in Mabini, Pangasinan from 22-24 February 2016. 

Bats are potential reservoir for emerging diseases since they are capable of transmitting zoonotic viral diseases. "In 2004 in fact, the Hendra virus which killed both horses and humans in Australia has been proven to be transmitted by fruit bats," Dr. Joseph S. Masangkay, Professor Emeritus at CVM and MNH Curator said. Dr. Masangkay leads the Philippine side of the research team.

Bats captured in Mt. Makiling last February 2015 and studied by a team of researchers from five Japanese institutions, UPLB College of Veterinary Medicine and the Museum of Natural History were found to harbor protozoa that can cause gastrointestinal infections.

Protozoan parasites are common causes of many diseases in both domestic and wild animals, as well as in humans. Bats are naturally infected with zoonotic pathogens and two genera of these, the Cryptosporidium and Eimeria, were detected either solely or in tandem in most of the bat species collected in four sampling sites inside the UPLB campus.

The tiny black wasps found associated with the Coconut Scale Insect (Aspidiotus rigidus Reyne) infesting coconuts in Calauan, Laguna and collected in 2014 by a team lead by Curator Mario V. Navasero have been formally described by MNH Curator Dr. Alberto T. Barrion and Drs. Billy Joel M. Almarinez, Divina M. Amalin and Jose Santos R. Carandang of De La Salle University's Biology Department.

In a recently published article of Asia Life Sciences (Vol. 25, No. 1), the authors described and illustrated a new species of Comperiella Howard 1906, only the second species of the genus known to occur in the Philippines.

The Philippines’ first conservation initiative to entice endemic species of frogs, particularly from Luzon, to breed in captivity has been established at the Museum of Natural History in response to the fast decline of amphibians in the country and the world.

The conservation scheme, dubbed as "Project Palaka" has developed an ex situ captive program that involves collecting individuals of endemic frogs from Mt. Makiling and maintaining them in captivity. The initial goal of the project is simply to breed each species, with future goals focused on the refinement of breeding techniques and captive maintenance, and a long-term target of understanding each species' captive care and reproductive requirements for conservation purposes.

The UPLB Museum of Natural History joined the Land Grant Management Office (LGMO) in celebrating the 86th Founding Anniversary of the UP Sierra Madre Land Grants last 9 February 2016. During the event, MNH Director Juan Carlos T. Gonzalez and Curator Pastor L. Malabrigo, Jr. gave lectures on the floral and faunal biodiversity of the Laguna and Quezon Land Grants.

In his talk, Prof. Malabrigo highlighted the remarkable diversity of forest trees in the land grants with at least 171 species recorded during their rapid assessment. He further emphasized the presence of threatened tree species, especially the dipterocarps.

Acarologist Dr. Hans Klompen of The Ohio State University's Department of Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology is the Museum's newest international collaborator and will be appointed as Visiting Curator this 2016.

For more than 30 years, Dr. Klompen has done research on systematics and evolution of parasitiform mites. He is currently the organizer of the Acarology Summer Program, one of the world's leading training programs in systematic acarology. He received his MS degree from Radboud University, The Netherlands and his doctoral degree from the University of Michigan.